Class A Felony - Class A Felony 2xLP - Red Vinyl (/120)

Chopped Herring (2016, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for twenty-five plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

You can count Class A Felony among the many golden era hip hop groups that I missed the first time around.  Their debut album originally came out in 1993 on Mercury, but I had never even heard their name until several years ago.  I actually picked up this LP a few years ago, but it's another one of those albums that I've put off writing about as something a little more exciting would keep jumping in front of it.  I'm trying to make a conscious effort to get through some of this backlog so here we go.

One of the things I love about this era of hip hop is the quality and creativity of the samples that were used.  The other thing that makes me prefer the early 90s to the eras that followed is the tempo of the production.  Class A Felony has both things going for it.  Excellent samples, and for the most part, the songs are pretty fast, throwing down more bpms than pretty much anything happening these days or during the sleepy late 90s.  The samples are put together in a way that reminds me of the first Godfather Don record, which harkens more to 1990 or 1991 as opposed to when this Class A Felony album originally came out in 1993.  In that way, if may have sounded a little behind the times when it was released, but not having heard it then, I can only same that to me, the production is timeless.

MC duties are handled by Dumar and he does a perfectly serviceable job.  He's attempting that Guru/Rakim laid back style and doing it well enough, but the songs would probably feel more exciting if he emoted a bit more.  Lyrically, he's fine.  But he's lacking some in the delivery department and that might be why the record didn't light the world on fire originally.  

The reissue is sort of lackluster in that the artwork is just a white sleeve with a sticker on it, but this album had never recieved a vinyl release before, so you take what you can get.  The vinyl color is listed as being translucent red, but it leans more orange to my eyes, but I'll still put red in the title because that's what they say it's supposed to be.  Is this a must have album?  Maybe not, but I think the production is strong enough to carry the album and it's a record worth a listen if it's not on your radar.

Class A Felony - Class A Felony:

https://deepconceptsmedia.bandcamp.com/album/class-a-felony-re-issue

J Rock - Streetwize 2xLP - Purple Vinyl w/ Obi (/50)

De Rap Winkel (2019, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for twenty-five plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

Streetwize originally came out in 1991 on a label called Ghetto Groovz.  Ghetto Groovz seems to have mostly only released this album and a few 12" by by J Rock.  I'm guessing it was pretty much an under the radar indie at the time.  As such, I had never heard of it in 1991, though I did see at least one ad for it in The Source as I've been rereading old issues of that.  J Rock is another one of those artists I found out about digging around online looking for albums that I had missed the first time around.  This is definitely one of those.

I actually picked this up a few years ago, but it ended up getting overlooked in my 'to write about' pile for way too long.  I've listened to it plenty of times, but when it came to deciding what record to write about on Wednesdays, I kept going for something a little shinier or more exciting.  Which is kind of how I feel about this record.  It's quite good really, but I do find myself more interested in listening to other things when push comes to shove.

As mentioned earlier, this album did come out in 1991 and at times, does sound a little dated, which isn't uncommon for 1991 records.  For whatever reason, 1991 was one of those super transitional years for hip hop production and it has left some albums feeling like they are part of the 'before' time and others being very clearly golden era classics.  Streetwize couldn't be straddling that line any more.  Several tracks were produced by DJ Premier, with the remainder handled by J Rock himself.  About half of them still sound really good.  Super solid beats for 1991.  The other half are on the simpler side and have more in common with the production of the late 1980s.  But all in all, it's still a fun listen.  I just find that I need to be in the right kind of mood to put this on, just like with other earlier hip hop albums.

J Rock on the microphone is really solid for a 1991 MC.  He's not lighting the world on fire with anything super dynamic or innovative, but he's also not kicking basic nursery school rhymes either.  Much like the beats, he's right on that line as far as taking the next steps into the golden era.  I like every song on this album, and there's a few that really hit that sweet spot.  Sometimes being a really good record in a sea of classics is a tough place to be.  J Rock probably doesn't get the respect he's due, but I guess I'm a little guilty of not giving him enough as well.  It is still definitely a record worth going out of your way to check out if you've never heard it before.

J Rock - Streetwize:
https://youtu.be/Tjkam7Ybt-Q?si=fhklMIBfKvOauKkw

Godzilla vs Spacegodzilla Soundtrack 2xLP - Purple w/ White Splatter Vinyl & Blue and Green Cornetto Vinyl (/2000)

Death Waltz / Mondo (2023)

I just rewatched Godzilla vs Space Godzilla for the first time since probably the original US VHS version came out in the lates 90s.  I didn't really like it then and over the years, it seems that popular consensus is that this movie was a stinker.  But I know that opinions change over time and some movies age well, so I wanted to give it a fresh viewing before writing about its soundtrack.  

It's still terrible.  I do not understand how you can go from Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla to this thing.  It's really pretty awful.  The story is silly, the action is suspect and everything about is campy, but not in the way I like my Godzilla movies.  I do think, and have always thought, that the design of Spacegodzilla is excellent.  I just don't know why they couldn't execute a good movie around it.  I also have no idea why he spends a quarter of the movie flying around with Big Rock Candy Mountain strapped to his back.  Bizarre.

For the soundtrack, Akira Ifukube isn't on board after scoring the last few Heisei movies.  Perhaps he wisely passed on it after seeing what it was becoming.  Takayuki Hattori steps in to fill the composer's chair and does a perfectly fine job.  The score is as good a score as you'll find for a pretty bad movie.  There's some interesting percussion and tempo changes mixed in with the usual lush orchestral sounds.  It's cool, but it's also not something I'd listen to very much as it inherently makes me think abotu a movie that isn't much fun to watch.

As usual, Death Waltz and Mondo do a very nice job with the soundtrack.  The art is great, but again is sort of out of place with the others in the series due to a lack of consistency.  As a standalone, it's nice, though I do question why they put Spacegodzilla in Big Rock Candy Mountain mode on the cover.  No matter what, this was going in the collection because the goal is to have the whole series.  Too bad theirs still no vinyl release for the Godzilla vs Biollante soundtrack.

Godzilla vs Spacegodzilla:
https://youtu.be/m6otWwSDw4k?si=dGQAEWfKi1mb1Ryu

Southpaw - Left Hand Rule 2xLP

90s Tapes (2025, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for twenty-five plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

90s Tapes deals in two major types of reissues.  When there's a more well known album being released, that's termed a "classic" and when they delve deeper into the more obscure or previously unreleased recording, they tend to call that release an "indie."  What I have put together myself is that the "classic" tend to have a much better chance of being from that 90-94 sweet spot (my sweet spot is 87-94, but 90s Tapes doesn't do reissues for 80s records) that I like for hip hop, where the "indie" releases often are from the second half of the 90s.  

This has led me to discover many post '94 "indie" albums that I probably wouldn't have heard otherwise and has, to an extent, made me soften my stance that hip hop is no good after 1994.  But, the flip side of that is 90s Tapes have definitely put out some albums from that time period that aren't my cup of tea.  Even the indie scene of that era seems to be obsessed with slow, atmospheric beats that don't have the driving rhythm of the earlier 90s.  But every so often, the stars align (at least for me).  Southpaw's Left Hand Rule is the more rare "indie" release that originally came out in 1993.

What that means for me is that the beats on this album are much more in line with the sort of production I gravitate towards.  There's still some slower cuts on here, but the majority have those hard hitting drums that I like so much.  It's not upper tier 1993 production, but it's good and has a varied sound from song to song that keeps the album interesting.   

On the lyrics side we have two MCs, Pro K and Champion.  Both are pretty gifted MCs and have flows that are on the more complex side of what was common in that era.  Again, we're not talking elite flows for 1993, but they're not doing nursery rhyme raps.  They know how to work within a beat and hit that pocket right where they need to.  It's a fun record and one that I like having around when I need a change of pace from my "classics" that I've listened to 40,000 times each.

Southpaw - Left Hand Rule:
https://90stapes.bandcamp.com/album/left-hand-rule

Ceylon Sailor - Here We Lie LP

Stunning Models On Display (2025)

The older I get the less in tune I am with what's going on with newer bands.  I'm not intentionally falling out of touch, but through a combination of lack of time and lack of bands working in the sounds that are most pleasing to my ears, it tends to happen. And more so with each passing year.  It would be easy to get depressed about it, but it's just as easy to say "I Hate The Kids" and embrace my inner curmudgeon.   Where I'm going with this is that more and more, I rely on good natured folks to alert me of some of the newer bands floating around out there that might strike my fancy.  And that's what happened with Ceylon Sailor.

They reached out to me and asked if I wanted an LP to write about and described themselves as a "90s-college-radio-styled indie rock band."  I mean, once they said "90s" I wasn't going to turn it down.  After spending some time with this album, I can definitely say that I'm glad they sent it over.  This is some solid, catchy indie rock and while they're not exactly reinventing the wheel or anything, they are writing good songs and playing them well.  And these days, that's more than a lot of bands are doing.

As I'm listening to them, I'm actually struggling to find a lot of 90s indie rock bands to compare Ceylon Sailor to.  They're not as weird as Pavement and they're not as playful as Built To Spill.  They're not as crunchy and rough as Archers of Loaf and they're not as punk as Superchunk.  They don't freak out like Modest Mouse and they don't suck like Neutral Milk Hotel.  I keep hearing a more upbeat version of bands that more made their mark in the early 2000s.  Early Death Cab For Cutie, Snow Patrol and Sweet John Bloom are the ones that first come to mind, with Sweet John Bloom being the most similar of the three.  

Where Ceylon Sailor takes things into more interesting ground is the extra instrumentation.  We've got some horns over hear and maybe a little banjo over there, but it's never added in a pretentious way.  There are times where bands throw in goofy crap just for the sake of it, but everything on Here We Lie serves the song in a way that you kind of can't imagine it working without this bonus layer of sound.  All in all, it's a fun record.  While it's not going to blow your mind with something you've never heard before, it's bound to impress you with it's consistency, competency and general good feelings.  Maybe it isn't the sort of record that I'll be playing constantly, but there are times that I do want to listen to this sort of thing and I'm glad they sent it over.

Ceylon Sailor - Here We Lie:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lnuzWYgjMLdz4PJTyc4JlPLDCOZ87ZrIA

Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla Soundtrack 2xLP - Clear With Orange Splatter Vinyl & Blue With White Swirl Vinyl (/2000)

Death Waltz / Mondo (2022)

The 1993 version of Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla is my favorite movie in the Heisei series.  There's always been something about it that grabs me and takes me along for the ride in the same way that all of the best Showa films do.  It's not even due to my eternal love of the 74/75 version of Mechagodzilla as the 93 design pales in comparison to my boy from the 70s.  But it's a movie that fires on all cylinders and I adore it.

Akira Ifukube is back for the soundtrack again and turns in another great score.  There are a lot of themes from older Godzilla movies used throughout, but for me that only adds to the nostalgia and good feelings that the film and its score bring to me.  Top notch stuff here (That's a technical music criticism phrase, I don't expect just anyone to be able to throw around analysis like that).

Death Waltz and Mondo originally dropped this release at the 2022 San Diego Comic Con with a die cut, neon green slipcover.  They made 2000 of these and they had them available for a while on the Mondo website afterwards.  While I would have never bought the less rare version when this one was available, I think the slipcover is pretty stupid and all it does is hide the excellent artwork.  I would have preferred that every version of the record had the same artwork and the slipcover was ditched.  But that's not how things went so I will forever have this dumb lime green sleeve that doesn't even have writing on the spine in my record collection.

Aside from that though, everything is really nice.  Strong art (though I do prefer what they did for the Mothra and King Ghidorah releases better and would have liked to have had the same artist do all of the Heisei releases), beautiful vinyl (despite not usually being a huge fan of splatter) and a killer screen print on the blank D side.  I'll bring up again how bummed I am that they never released the soundtrack to Godzilla vs Biollante, but I'd be even more bummed if Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla was the one that got skipped.

Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1993):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5t51qhsSIt5KTGRT5I5zj2uTEt73UuRf

Various Artists - Music From The Motion Picture Judgment Night - Red Vinyl (/3150 - Record Store Day 2023)

Legacy / Epic Soundtrax (2023, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for twenty-five plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years. 

A few years back I wrote a lengthy missive about the Judgment Night Soundtrack as I had picked up the Music On Vinyl version that had come out in 2020.  One of the key things of that release, and also of the original vinyl release in 1993, is that the track listing is different from the CD version.  The vinyl starts of with the Sonic Youth/Cypress Hill collaboration "I Love You Mary Jane," while the CD begins with "Just Another Victim" from House of Pain and Helmet.  I just couldn't stand the variance in track order because the CD version is what I had in 1993 and was what I was most familiar with, so I didn't listen to the LP much.

In 2023, the Judgment Night Soundtrack was released on vinyl for Record Store Day in honor of its 30th anniversary.  Truthfully, I didn't pay much attention to it as I already had the Music On Vinyl version.  Little did I know that the Record Store Day version corrected my biggest issue with the vinyl and used the original track order from the CD version.  I figured that out a couple of weeks ago and almost immediately grabbed the newer RSD version.

And it is an absolute delight to have this on vinyl in a way that I can listen to without being grumpy.  Aside from when the Slayer and Ice T collab comes on, that's never a song that puts anyone in a good mood.  I still stand by what I wrote the last time about the music on this album and you can check that out here:  https://www.ibuywaytoomanyrecords.com/2021/03/various-artists-music-from-motion.html so I won't rehash too much of that.  But I will reiterate that this was a really important record to me back in 1993.  So many hip hop groups that I liked were on it and to this day the Dinosaur Jr./Del The Funky Homosapien track "Missing Link" ranks pretty high among my favorite Del songs.  If you want this record on vinyl, this is the version to get.  

Original Flavor - Beyond Flavor 2xLP + 7"

90s Tapes (2024, Reissue) 

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late '80s and early '90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for twenty-five plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

Original Flavor was one of those groups that I came across looking for 90s hip hop that I missed the first time around.  I checked out their debut album, This Is How It Is, first and it didn't really stick.  I didn't check out their second album at the time.  When 90s Tapes released Beyond Flavor, I pretty much bought it unheard as I trust their taste in reissues and when they drop an album it's very much a buy now or cry later situation.  I'm really glad I took the chance.

I'll start with what is typically the most important thing for me on a golden era hip hop album, the beats.  And the beats are great.  Upbeat, jazzy loops with strong drums and lots of great scratching in the breaks.  It's exactly the sort of production I am looking for in my hip hop and while it definitely leans towards a more accessible sound, it does so in a way that still feels real.

The lyrics are solid, but not spectacular.  They sort of come off like a lesser UMCs (first album) or Leaders of the New School (also first album).  Never as good as either of those group, but in the same wheelhouse and totally fine.  There's a lot of post Das-EFX "diggety" being dropped throughout the album and also by Jay-Z (yes, that Jay-Z) on "Can I Get Open," which is kind of wacky.  It's the production that makes the record though and this is going to be one of those records I pull out when I'm looking for some upbeat hip hop to brighten the day.

Original Flavor - Beyond Flavor:
https://90stapes.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-flavor